<p>Add me to the list that despises group projects and huge, irrelevent time wasters, which have nothing to do with mastery of the subject matter.</p>
<p>I did, one time, see peer editing done incredibly well by an 8th grade teacher. She graded the paper AND she graded the edit. So, each kid would get a paper edited by the teacher to rewrite, and they would get an edit of the edit they’d done, to show them what they were missing. My kiddo learned a ton about writing and revising in that class. (But, you see here the teacher was actually adding to her work with this, not trying to “get out of it.”) She was a fantastic teacher. She took the kids through a group project from start to finish, too, all “in class” and taught them how to put people in positions, how to divide up work, how to create follow up points.</p>
<p>one in a million.</p>
<p>The problem with a lot of this stuff is that its effectiveness is teacher dependent. Since it can’t be standardized, the kids would be better off drilling the subject matter with most teachers.</p>
<p>Another complaint about group projects - the kids choose their buddies for groups. Those with less ‘social capital’ are left with others like themselves. It almost seemed like a form of bullying to me - nearly every group project started with rejection for some.</p>
<p>But one good thing - my D did have a teacher who let the kids choose whether to be in a group or to do the project by themselves. My D chose both ways for various projects. This seems like a very rational approach. After all, the most capable are doing almost all the work themselves anyway.</p>
<p>By the way, I had the ‘new math’ in 6th grade and I loved it! So interesting. I can understand, however, how the plug-and-chug folks would hate it. So maybe they need to include both types at some point in math teaching?</p>
<p>On the subject of peer editing, my d had an algebra teacher who had the students grade each other’s homework in class. The homework was then turned into the teacher, who handed it out to parents at back to school night. We weren’t told that the students were doing the grading, and my d had never mentioned it. Anyway, my d’s homework had many, many problems marked wrong, so being the concerned parent, I decided to go over the problems with her. Not even one of the problems was wrong. I sent the work back in with a sticky note on each problem asking the teacher to please explain the proper solutions to my d because neither my d nor I were able to understand how to “properly” do them.</p>
<p>The teacher then instituted a new rule. If you marked a peer’s homework incorrectly, your homework grade would be marked down. And the teacher asked the class how many of them had parents who checked their homework.</p>
<p>No, “New” math was also in the 70’s. I suffered through it. Also with the “open” classrooms.</p>
<p>HATE projects. Most of them an inordinate amount of time for little learning value. Many of them graded based on the art ability of the parents. Good students do the work for slackers.</p>
<p>New Tech–a local HS has this and they are really pushing it. So is our governor. Yes, a computer at every kid’s desk is going to save the day. That way they can be on facebook all day before they get to college. Everything is group work and presentations. </p>
<p>This school is on academic probation right now. I guess New Tech does everything but increase passing scores on statewide assessments. I hope my D graduates before our admin gets the bright idea to implement this. That is probably my biggest beef of all, that schools don’t teach the basics and do them well. Instead, they are jumping from here to there, and chasing things (with a lot of $, time and effort) that do not materialize. Once they start the bandwagon, it’s very difficult to slow down the train.</p>
<p>If you think regular education has lots of acronyms, try special ed!</p>
<p>Our school district sends home computer generated report cards that are literally five pages long and full of incomprehensible “standards” and “curriculum objectives”…and this is for elementary school!<br>
Pleeaze: Parents and teachers just want a few simple letter or number grades to explain, “Can my kid read and add, or not?” I doubt if anyone understands the system that is in place.</p>
<p>My son’s school also has the group project approach and I find it troubling. He is a top student and usually does almost all the work for the group (the teachers pick the members of the groups) or shares with one other kid if that kid is also one of the best students. He ends up doing a great deal of work and through doing so actually learns quite a bit. I do not think he is being shortchanged at all, but many of the other kids are getting next to nothing out of it. It does not appear to serve the interests of the great majority of students and a reevaluation is much needed.</p>
<p>OP here. Just had to comment that D got assigned 2 more poems since I started this thread. UGHH!!! One of them is a project which requires artwork-- paper cut-outs of astronomical features.</p>
<p>As to group projects, our district’s teachers are required to assign collaborative assessments whether they want to or not. The better teachers agree with us about group projects, but have no choice. D’s math teacher tried to do a “group quiz.” The parents put a stop to that one, at least.</p>
<p>We went through something similar when the high school wanted each unit to include a graded task for visual learners, for auditory learners, for tactile learners, …</p>
<p>My school district cannot be the only one who is currently going through the Smartboards are super-cool trend. Our school has been working towards having a Smartboard in every classroom. Smartboards can be useful, but often they just become epensive, glorified projectors. I have yet to see a Smartboard used effectively in an English classroom (i.e. in a way that transcends its use as a projector). Smartboards can also decrease classroom efficiency due to how something always seems to go wrong when using Smartboard software.</p>
<p>I wish my district put a little more thought into the pros and cons of Smartboards instead of trying to seem as innovative as neighboring districts.</p>
<p>I’m going to dissent on all of the nastiness about the texting assignment. I would be upset if that were all a teacher ever assigned my child, but I can see real value in it for middle schoolers. It’s fun and a little silly, but to do it well they have to really understand both the content and the tone of a difficult piece of “adult” writing, and then pare it down radically so that all the important things, and nothing else, get communicated. Like any translation exercise, that requires a lot of interpretive ability, forces the student to make judgments about the text, and makes the student express those interpretations and judgments in the student’s own, original language. If the teacher is doing it well, he or she can engage the students on how they read the original text, AND how they used text to translate the original text, AND what they left behind when they did that.</p>
<p>Not so bad for a lesson plan. It could easily not work as I imagine it, but if it did it would be pretty great.</p>
<p>The texting assignment reminds me of the book The Little Book of Twitter by Tim Collins. </p>
<p>Examples:
*
Ulysses*
jamesjoyce: Man walks around Dublin. We follow every minute detail of his day. He’s probably overtweeting.</p>
<p>Great Expectations
charlesdickens: Orphan given £££ by secret follower. He thinks it’s @misshavisham but it turns out to be @magwitch</p>
<p>and my favorite pair: </p>
<p>Pride and Prejudice
janeaustin: Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.</p>
<p>Bridget Jones’s Diary
helenfielding: RT @janeaustin Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.</p>
<p>I too think Smartboards are a waste of money.</p>
<p>I liked the new math I got ca. 1964. All sorts of set theory and logic. My Mom who was teaching me via a one room schoolhouse, was not so fond of it!</p>
<p>I hate art projects associated with any other subject besides art. In 7th grade English class, I took note that whenever the paint and sparkly glue were trotted out, my d was doing an ENGLISH project. I asked the teacher why they weren’t READING and WRITING. She responded that the art projects and ungraded (or peer edited!) journals kept by the students helped her establish RAPPORT. Oh Brother! Add “rapport” to the list of overused concepts that serve very little purpose.</p>
<p>I still remember when S had to do a series of poems in a bound book with artwork and an explanation of how each poem was inspired. He made it all up over a weekend (good creative writing) and ended up with an A. He considered it a huge timewaster and didn’t respect the teacher or assignment.</p>
<p>Re: Vitrac’s post #54. We too HATE art projects associated with subjects other than art. For one thing, the unartistic student has no teacher guidance available to help him/her accomplish the task. D’s current teachers love to make them draw. While I understand drawing things like the parts of a cell, or the anatomy of frog, or a map, they seem to want them to draw words and concepts. </p>
<p>Take D’s weekend assignment. She has to draw and color 12 foreign language vocabulary words. These include “stealthily,” “crashing sound,” “voice,” “nothing,” and “weak in a shaky way.” Recently for social studies she had to draw forms of government like “tyranny,” and “democracy,” as well as the Roman governmental bodies such as the Senate.</p>